Sing Me To My Paradise
by Bloodredfirefly
Summary: Oh, but how she misses them, their laughter in the night. Who says Katniss really got her happily ever after? Who says love can be defined by words or reality? She feels their love when she needs it most and it makes her stronger, wiser, better - she can see the truth when they tell her how. She sees what she has to do. Mad!Katniss, bit of weird fic - written for Starvation Forum.


Sing Me To My Paradise

_At this place we lay to rest,_

_Those whose hearts we know were blessed._

_And at this sad place in time,_

_We remember neither wrong nor crime._

_We see not the deaths attached to their names,_

_We care not for the place they had in the Games._

_These are our siblings and these are our loves,_

_They live on within us and we'll free them as doves._

Below the memorial inscription is a long list of names, all those who died in the games from the first to the seventy-fifth. I recognise barely any of the one thousand seven hundred and nineteen names on the marble plating, only those from my lifetime and those from my games.

The marble is shaped like a Cornucopia, much smaller of course, with the poem Peeta of all people wrote grounded in the mud in the mouth of it. I hate it will all the fire of my soul – it's even worse than I thought it would be. I hate how they thought engraving a name onto a piece of stone was remembering them. How could it be? A name is nothing but a few letters, a date just a place in time.

Writing Rue's name on an oversized, over glorified piece of dirt is insulting to her memory. How dare they put her up alongside killers, alongside Cato and Clove and Marvel? How dare they make them equals, equal in being nothing, when she faced death the innocence of a lamb and the heart of a lion?

I close my eyes. It's been a long time since I've felt angry. It's been a long time since I've felt anything. I don't like it. I want my serenity back. I don't want a guilt I can get rid of – sitting in an armchair begging Prim silently to come back, it hurts like liquid ice and numbs me with its intensity, but this, all these crushing feeling of options and possibility's and responsibility. They leave me suffocating and drowning all on my own, even as the rest of the world crowds in and talks, talks, talks. I can't bear the tender touch of love any more. It burns my skin and makes it melt and splinter and crackle and bruise.

"Katniss, love," Peeta whispers to me, putting his safe, warm, terrible arm round my waist to constrict me, to crush the air from my lungs. "It's time to go."

"No," I whisper, though I want to fly free of here and dance through the skies like a songbird on fire. "Tell me something first. Why doves?"

He pauses, surprised. He thinks I know, and I suppose I probably should. I wait silently, though inside I never stop thinking, churning away, inwardly fighting the confines of my new life, the chains of it, the blood that's painted on the walls.

"Doves mean peace Katniss. It was a big thing, remember? After you killed Coin, half the crowd became convinced they saw a single dove fly from the doors of Snow's mansion." He reminds me, his voice gentle and loving. I get the feeling he has told me this story before, but it doesn't matter. Maybe a dove did fly from his mansion. But if it symbolised peace, it must have died just over the horizon, for we have found no safety yet.

I let the gentle – biting, stinging – touch on my arm lead me away and I go home with Peeta. A part of me hates him now. I've never hated Peeta before but I do now. He might have saved my life, but he lost me my soul and he never understood. I want him dead, I want him dead, I want him dead.

That night, I set the table for dinner, using all my energy coming from my boiling anger to act kind and polite. Peeta is pleased, hugging me and kissing my hair. I endure it because I have too. It will all be over soon.

I eat everything at dinner and more. I'm thin now, too skinny for what I have planned. But I don't rail at myself. Peeta took me to a doctor once and she said I have post-traumatic stress disorder – said I was angry at myself. I laughed. I've never been more at peace – me, this tiny person wrapped in the hell they all put me through, the laughing, the jeering, the stares and whispers and sneers. I hate them all. But I don't hate myself.

It takes hours to get rid of Peeta. He hangs around, holding on to the image of me. We watch the Capitol report of the memorial going up – we're even on it, caught on camera staring up at it. They read his poem out. I don't listen. It makes me want to puke. In the doorway Rue and Prim hold hands and smile at me, tears dripping down there faces and turning to blood. I kiss Peeta goodnight and go to my room, trapping myself in with them.

They come to me, wrapping themselves around me and clinging on, claws digging into my fleshless bones. They tug my hair out, bite at the skin of my arms. I rejoice in being near my darlings again. At least they are real, so unlike all the rest of my pitiful life. Tonight, I re-join them. Permanently.

The night air is cold but I'm warm with my lost ones beside me. We walk like a parade, like a march, all these thousands of us. One thousand seven hundred and nineteen dead tributes, seventy five surviving victors who are dead in spirit, countless from a war that did nothing but replace one corrupt government with another. Beautiful. I feel alive tonight.

A smile touches my face as the old woman from eight, who asked about my baby in the make-shift hospital, reaches out flaming fingers and burns off my skin. My friends are cruel but kind, harsh but real and always honest. It's never anything but honesty with my dear ones. I hold the fragile body of my sister in my arms, feeling her beak tearing away flesh, holding her close, relishing in the scent of her skin – decay, mould, the dark earth of her grave.

I walk through the darkness to the guarding fence. It looms ahead of me, buzzing away, the occasional _zap, zap, click, click_ of the mechanics. It's on, just as I knew it would be. I grin into the darkness, taking one look back at the lights of my hometown. I can make out victor village. I laugh. And then I raise my bleeding hands to the wire and cling on with my loves singing beside me.

_Lost among them was my love,_

_Who walked down here but belonged above._

_Gone is she now to the home of the wild,_

_Away with her sister, away with her child._

_She's in a place where love is warm,_

_And she's free of fear, out of the storm._

_And even though we're now apart,_

_We are together, because she has my heart._

**A/N: So, you guessed it! That was…. me being weird again. Apologies to all fans who are going to (again) get rather upset with me for the whole death thing. Sorry. I just love it too much to resist.**

**The poems (if you couldn't work it out from how bad they were) are written by my wonderful self. Needless to say I don't have much experience with poetry. But I liked it, so I will probably be entertaining – or irritating – you with more poetry soon. Till then my lovelies!**

**1 review for me = 1 review for you. I respond when you do!**


End file.
